


fildychrom

by feralphoenix



Category: Riviera: The Promised Land
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is a wunderkind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fildychrom

**Author's Note:**

> _(The scent of her beauty draws me to her place_ – first to take this foot to virgin snow)

There was no heavenly messenger come down to tell the scattered villagers in the field that she was come.

No pillar of light illuminated the world at the moment of her birth.

She performed her first exorcism before she learned to hold a sword.

 

 

 

(She has been fencing since the age of six.)

 

 

 

She tried to explain, once, to her grandfather what it felt like for the seasons to change.

“The smell of the air changes, and—in spring, it’s as if the earth is strung with garlands of a thousand stars. So many lives are being born, and so many other lives are waking. It’s not like anything else. My body feels so light, and it’s like—it’s like the world is singing. Don’t you feel the same way?”

“No,” said Graham. His lined face was thoughtful. “I have never felt the world turn the way that you do.”

 

 

 

One night, when she was small and tiptoeing down the stairs for a drink, the lights were on and her grandfather and his bodyguard were having a conversation:

“—suggests that a genetic sport may be born directly preceding times of crisis, to introduce traits of greater strength into the races of Sprites. As a boon from the world, if you will: We exist to maintain nature, and this is a way that nature gives back to us.”

It was quiet for a while. She sat down on the steps and listened.

“Do the researchers at the magic guild have any signs to report of an impending cataclysm, then?”

“No. Or at least, no natural disaster that can be predicted. Even though this is our land, there are places that we do not have the strength and wisdom to safely explore. That is why we simply guard the closed-off places. As the elder, I cannot order my people into danger when we do not even have a lead to go on.”

“But it is definite, then. At least in her.”

“She has unprecedented spiritual power and sympathy with the earth. History has never recorded anything like it. Her parents were nothing special, in terms of ability level. It surely portends something. Perhaps we are just failing to read the signs.”

“…Then, all we can do is to make certain that she is ready.”

“We cannot ask too much of her. For one thing, she is naught but a child; for another, it is still her choice what to do with the power she has been born with. We owe our allegiance to the precepts passed down to us by the gods, but we are different from them. We must respect the free will of living creatures.”

Her grandfather and Ladie were silent again after that. She crept back up the stairs and hid in her bed until the sun rose.

 

 

 

When she could cook and clean and defeat her tutor at fencing and could handle difficult magical books without their innate power going wild, she asked for her own house.

She got the feeling that there was a great deal more argument behind closed doors than she saw discontent from her grandfather’s household, but: In the end he gave her permission, on the condition that she bring one of the house fairies with her as helper and servant.

So she rolled up her sleeves and she took a broom to the old abandoned two-level on the far side of town and spent the better part of a month replacing the old rotten furniture, and when the place was the warm color of fall and shining with cleanliness she moved in.

 

 

 

That winter was harsh, and a successive series of blizzards swept the land in brutal succession. She dreamed of pale ghosts blowing through the snowscape and once she climbed the stairs in her sleep and woke herself up falling from the second-story window into a snowdrift. After that she went out in scarf and mittens and banished spirits from all over the town until tears were painful grains of ice gritting her eyelashes. It wasn’t their fault that they had congregated around the only warm and lively place for miles and miles.

When she returned home, it was with a strange and pervasive feeling that something was trying to begin.

More likely than not this was one of the Feelings that she had sometimes, and no one would understand, much less believe her. So she tied her hair back like nothing was any different and went back to the recipe for Danish that she was trying to learn.

 

 

 

A few days after that, Ladie came to her door.

“We have found a survivor wandering in the storm. Your grandfather has proposed leaving her treatment to you.”

Fia narrowed her eyes and turned her head to the side, considering.

“All right,” she said at last, and smiled.


End file.
